Zeppelin Hindenburg's Salvaged Postmark Device

H-Postal-History Zeppelin Hindenburg’s Salvaged Postmark Device

Blog Post published by Susan Smith on Wednesday, September 26, 2018

by Cheryl R. Ganz, PhD, Smithsonian Curator Emerita

After the inspectors and officials examined the wreckage, surviving crewmembers searched the smoldering girders for personal effects. Rudolf Sauter, chief mechanic of the LZ-129 Hindenburg, had escaped from his landing station in the lower fin when the zeppelin burst into flames at Lakehurst, New Jersey, on the stormy evening of May 6, 1937. Still bandaged from a head wound and in his rumpled uniform, he picked through the debris to find scorched postcards, swatches of outer fabric painted in swastika colors from the tail fin, and a small mechanical device—the ship’s postal handstamp, about an inch and a half from all sides.

Sauter gave the object and other salvaged souvenirs to Bill Schneider, his American friend who had met Hindenburg on all eleven of its arrivals. Schneider was an ardent amateur photographer, autograph hound, and collector of flown zeppelin mail. He befriended many of the crew during their brief time off before Hindenburg’s return flights. It therefore seemed most fitting to Sauter that Schneider, a Rahway postal clerk, receive the remains of the only postmark device aboard the final flight. The fire had destroyed the wooden handle, rubber type, and rotating date mechanism of this postmark handstamp.

When Hindenburg met tragedy, more than 17,000 pieces of mail burned to ashes. Films of the thirty- four-second inferno suggest that nothing could have survived. However, hydrogen burns upward, and oxygen could not penetrate all the tightly packed mail. The mailrooms were directly above the control car, one of the last areas of the zeppelin to burn. As a result, when officials entered the wreckage, they began to find small batches of mail leading to nine findings of mail. By mid-July of 1937, officials had recovered and logged 357 pieces of mail from Hindenburg’s wreckage. Over ten percent of the salvaged mail had been serviced aboard.

A disproportionate amount of passenger mail survived. This mail had received the onboard postal cancellation stamped by the salvaged device found by Sauter. Passengers could purchase postcards and stamps from Hindenburg’s stewards. After writing messages, they deposited the cards in a mail slot in the Reading and Writing Room. Navigator Max Zabel, onboard postmaster for the flight, collected the mail to cancel the stamps with the onboard postal handstamp. Passenger and crew mail postmarked during the two and half days of flight was a very small percent of the mail carried. In addition, some mail was prepared in advance by stamp collectors with most of it postmarked with a different onboard cancel device in Frankfurt before departure.

Helmsman Kurt Schönherr had served as postmaster for the LZ-127Graf Zeppelin and 1936 Hindenburg flights. Through an interpreter, U.S. Postal Inspectors interviewed Schönherr twice in his hospital beds after the 1937 disaster. He explained his role with the mail on the final flight: receiving the mail at Frankfurt, storing and locking it in the mailroom, and delivering this stored mail at Lakehurst. Prior to arrival at Lakehurst, he bundled this mail so that it could be dropped from the control car immediately following contact with the mooring mast. When Schönherr jumped through a control car window, stumbled, and dove through the wreckage to safety, the onboard cancelled mail

Citation: Susan Smith. Zeppelin Hindenburg’s Salvaged Postmark Device. H-Postal-History. 09-26-2018. https://networks.h-net.org/node/193635/blog/object-blog/2543326/zeppelin-hindenburg%E2%80%99s-salvaged-postmark-device Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. 1 H-Postal-History remained behind. Amazingly, several dozen of the tightly bundled cards and letters with the onboard postmark survived and are today prized rarities of philately.

The Hindenburg disaster remains part of the American popular imagination due in part because it was the first aviation disaster caught on motion picture film. Using material culture such as the postmark device to understand the complexity of operations and to discover insights into life aboard creates a more nuanced and accurate picture of howHindenburg had an impact on world postal communications and transportation. This salvaged postmark device combined with archival resources and published works offers a piece of the puzzle in that larger story.

Captions

Figure 1

Remains of Hindenburg’s only onboard postmark device salvaged by crewmember Rudolf Sauter. Courtesy Cheryl Ganz

Figure 2

Businessman Burtis J. “Bert” Dolan sent this card ofHindenburg ’s smoking room, which he purchased aboard, to his neighbor. Dolan perished in the disaster after jumping through a window. This card is one of seven surviving examples of this postmark on mail written by a passenger and postmarked during the flight. Forty recorded examples of this postmark survived, but most of them had been favor posted for philatelists. Courtesy Cheryl Ganz

Figure 3

Hindenburg burst into flames on May 6, 1937, at Lakehurst, New Jersey. Courtesy Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum

Sources

H.R. Nichol correspondence and documents in Cheryl R. Ganz, Finding Guide Zeppelin Hindenburg Crash Mail Documents: The “Arthur Falk Hindenburg Papers” and “Postal Inspection Service Hindenburg Disaster File,” Smithsonian National Postal Museum, 2013. postalmuseum.si.edu/research/pdfs/Hindenburg_Finding_Guide.pdf. Retrieved March 2018. [author note: before 2012, the Post Office Department lists ofHindenburg crash mail were unavailable to researchers.]

Cheryl R. Ganz and Daniel Piazza, Fire & Ice: Hindenburg and Titanic, Smithsonian National Postal Museum, 2012,www.postalmuseum.si.edu/fireandice/index.html. Retrieved March 2018.

Cheryl R. Ganz, “Zeppelin Hindenburg’s Onboard Postmarks and the Final Flight,” Collectors Club Philatelist (July 2012): 215-220.

Dan Grossman, Cheryl Ganz, and Patrick Russell,Zeppelin Hindenburg: An Illustrated History of LZ-129 (Great Britain: History Press, 2017).

Dieter Leder, LZ-129 Hindenburg Zeppelin Crash Mail (Meersburg, Germany: Topo/Verlag, 2012).

Patrick Russell, Faces of the Hindenburg, facesofthehindenburg.blogspot.com/. Retrieved March 2018.

Record Group 47, Department of Commerce, Bureau of Air Commerce,Hindenburg Investigation Papers at the National Archives: “Max Zabel” testimony pages 528-536 and “Kurt Schoenherr” testimony pages 667-673, U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, Maryland, USA.

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